CNN has reportedly blown past its earning forecasts by $100 million thanks to the network's focus on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, a report said on Monday.
Sources told NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik that CNN's "Trump fascination" was responsible for a revenue windfall.
As of May, Trump had reportedly received the equivalent of $3 billion in free advertisements due to wall-to-wall media coverage.
CNN also maximized its election cash machine by hosting countless hours of Trump surrogates, often at the expense of real reporting.
Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan detail earlier this month how CNN played a crucial role in the "improbable rise of Donald Trump."
CNN president Jeff Zucker "gave Trump astonishing amounts of free exposure in the Republican presidential primary on the cable network, continually blasting out his speeches and rallies — often unfiltered and without critical fact-checking," Sullivan wrote.
